Check out this video. Fascinating
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=xOAgT8L_BqQ&feature=player_embedded[/video]
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=xOAgT8L_BqQ&feature=player_embedded[/video]
How large is our Government
- Thread starter audioguy
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Pop quiz, no Googling allowed. Just answer based on your perceptions. Which administration in the last 60 years operated the smallest federal government (as a % of GDP)? Which administration in the same time period shrunk the size of government operations (staff, budgets) without Congressional involvement/law?
Tim
Tim
Tim,
Isn't it a wee bit disingenuous to credit Clinton with the smaller size of the federal government and slowing the growth of government operations or is this as you phrased it in another thread "lying on your back and pointing down at the rising moon would prove that you had flown over the thing"? Clinton's natural instincts were to enlarge the government. Indeed his initial signature legislative goal was national healthcare ('HiliaryCare') and he resisted initial attempts at welfare reform.
BTW, according to the White House (http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2012/assets/hist.pdf) Federal Spending rose during the 1993 - 2001 Clinton budgets from $1.409 to $1.862 trillion.
Isn't it a wee bit disingenuous to credit Clinton with the smaller size of the federal government and slowing the growth of government operations or is this as you phrased it in another thread "lying on your back and pointing down at the rising moon would prove that you had flown over the thing"? Clinton's natural instincts were to enlarge the government. Indeed his initial signature legislative goal was national healthcare ('HiliaryCare') and he resisted initial attempts at welfare reform.
BTW, according to the White House (http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2012/assets/hist.pdf) Federal Spending rose during the 1993 - 2001 Clinton budgets from $1.409 to $1.862 trillion.
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Disingenuous to refer to the historical facts? No, I don't think so. Did I say he was totally responsible? Nope. He had a lot of help from a Republican Congress who not only had ideas, but was willing to let them be signed by a Democratic president. He also had the help of good times. Natural instincts? This is politics, and more often than not, people who want to get things done, quickly figure out what might be good for the country that can get done and get on with it. We should have such leadership today. I'm sure Reagan and Bush 2's instincts were "small government," but Reagan saved Social Security and Bush passed the biggest expansion of entitlements in America since the Great Society. My point was not that Clinton was an example to us all or that he got exactly what he wanted. It was that in politics, things are seldom as the seem, or as it seems they should be.
Tim
Tom-Since you seem to envy government workers so much, how come you never became one? It's not like it is impossible. The government is always hiring new people and that is because the work force is old and it's turning over. As for your argument about job descriptions written in such a manner that promotions are almost always from within, I guess you don't realize how hard the government recruits at colleges nationwide in order to hire new young people.
As far as unions go, the biggest weapon a normal union has is the right to strike. Federal unions have no such right. The Air Traffic Controllers found that out the hard way when they made the mistake of going out on strike during the Reagan administration and Regan fired every one of them. When you have a union without the right to strike, you have a watchdog with no teeth. They can gum you a little bit, but it's not going to hurt.
As far as unions go, the biggest weapon a normal union has is the right to strike. Federal unions have no such right. The Air Traffic Controllers found that out the hard way when they made the mistake of going out on strike during the Reagan administration and Regan fired every one of them. When you have a union without the right to strike, you have a watchdog with no teeth. They can gum you a little bit, but it's not going to hurt.
I didn’t know the movement had shifted from greedy Wall Street people to placing blame on government workers. We all have to make choices in life. If you choose to work for a small business that will provide you with zero benefits, that’s a choice my friend. You have to decide what’s important to you and then strive to get there. All I’m saying is that if you want to work for the government and you have a skill-set the government wants, you can get hired. Now there was no cost of living raise last year and there will be no cost of living raise in 2012 either. There is talk on the hill of expanding that for 5 more years. There is also talk of freezing all promotions and within grade increases. Money to pay for awards to outstanding employees has been cut in half. The house just passed legislation that will only allow the government to hire one new employee for each three that leave. If all the legislation passes, it will be very hard to recruit and hire new employees.
But on the flip side, you have incredible job security. Indeed, a federal employee is much more likely to leave their job feet first than get fired. As Jack Cafferty (http://caffertyfile.blogs.cnn.com/2...-are-more-likely-to-die-than-lose-their-jobs/) at CNN noted just a few months ago:
"An analysis by USA Today found the job security rate for government employees at many federal agencies last year was more than 99%. And these workers are more likely to die than to lose their jobs to a layoff or firing. The federal government only fired about one half of a percent of its workforce last year. The private sector in contrast fires about 3% of workers annually for performance.
Just to give you a few examples: At the Small Business Administration, which employs about 4,000, six people were fired last year but there were no layoffs. Seventeen employees died. Not a single federal attorney was laid off last year - there are about 35,000 of them. Just 27 were fired, 33 died. At both the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission, not a single employee was fired or laid off last year."
There is a premise here that the Government should be having layoffs. Layoffs happen in the business world usually due to a downturn in business. In fact, the Air Force is getting rid of over a thousand federal workers right now because of a money crunch. DoD has been through two recent rounds of Base Realignment and Closure where bases were shuttered and lots of people lost their jobs. There is nothing inherently wrong with job security, there is just a scarcity of it.
And Mark, you are a doctor. I have no idea of what kind of change you are knocking down, but I'm real sure if you were a government doctor you would be making less. Ditto for any lawyer. It's not all peaches and cream.
But how many government physicians put their house on the line in order expand their practice and help bring new technology to their community?
That's a reflection of our new reality; a reality driven by our crumbling financial status. No country has been able to support a strong military and a large welfare state. As the US retrenches militarily, it will leave the world a more dangerous place.
Let's boil that down to the basics for a moment and see if it reads any differently: "How many government workers put their house on the line to finance the expansion of their businesses?"
Given that they are government workers, not business owners, very few, I suspect.
So there is never a good reason to close a base? Never a need to shift military resources or even reduce them?
Tim
Mark-I’m a little surprised that you wrote the above statement and I’m not sure what your point is. Are you trying to say that government doctors are overpaid? There is a reason why military/government doctors don’t make the same money as civilian doctors. They don’t have to pay for offices, staff, supplies, overhead, etc. There is no risk/reward ratio. If a civilian doctor puts his “house on the line,” in order to expand his practice, there is a risk that the expanded practice could fail to generate sufficient revenue to cover the costs of the expansion and they could lose their house as a result. There is also the chance that the expansion will be highly successful. If you are a government doctor, no matter how great you are, no matter how hard you work, at some point your pay will be maxed out and you simply won’t be eligible for any further salary increases.
Are you making the argument that we need to keep our military strong?
I have worked for both and if you are recent gov't employee under the FERS system, it differs little from the private sector job I have now. A little better 401k plan, a litte worse pension. Depends on where you are at in the federal govt' but unless you are an executive, I don't see that much difference except in the job security part. I make much more in the private sector )(15 years now, prior 10 years in govt) doing the same thing as I did in the govt. It is true that the old civil service system was generous but that is just legacy employees.
Sometimes people "see" what their ideology wants them to see rather than just looking at facts. The political talking heads many times love this us vs. them scenarios because it generates advertising dollars.
That's a tough one, Doc. Most of the talk of eliminating government programs, even entire departments, is waste water on the wind, economically speaking. When a guy like Rick Perry (a complete tool) talks about closing down the departments of Education and, um, uh, yeah, that one that, you know.... it's political posturing. Small wonder he can't remember it. The money, as I'm sure you know, is in entitlements, foreign policy (not foreign aid) and the military. And the last two are all mixed up in each other's shorts. Foreign policy and the miliary is going to be hard.
We basically need to change our entire approach to developing and leveraging global influence. We can't afford, any longer, to do it by propping up despots. History has taught us that they keep every dime of bribe we pay them for themselves and their very small circle, let their people live in squalor and are eventually removed from power by communists/terrorists/anarchists/islamists...filintheblankists...who hate us because we supported the murderous slimeball who oppressed them. The worst part is they're right. If we can't conduct business based on our own values, if we will pay for any blood-sucking, baby-killing dictator who seems to be pro-American for a few minutes, we don't have much moral high ground to stand on. "The enemy of my enemy is a friend of mine" is a morally bankrupt idea that has driven our foreign policy and come back to bite us in the butt repeatedly for decades. And it has drained billions from our economy that doesn't show up as foreign aid or military spending. Shadowy little billions.
Then there's the straight-up military part. Necessary wars followed by a half century of military presence and protection, and local (if you're in Germany, for example) economic advantage. Unnecessary wars followed by decades of nation building with all the economic advantage going to international corporations. Draconian political protectionism of any and all domestic military bases and projects that send a dollar to a Congressional district. Billions and billions and billions of dollars.
Entitlements? Even tougher. I think we need serious healthcare reform, to get costs under control, to serve the following, but that's a long subject of its own...
Medicare/Social Security -- We have to stop pretending these are savings programs and embrace the truth that they are tax-funded safety nets. Why is that important? Because we pay Medicare and Social Security to people who don't need it. People like you and me. People who, if they paid all their own insurance premiums out of pocket and completely funded their own retirements, would still die with money in the bank. Paying Social Security to the affluent, just because they "paid into it" is like paying aid to dependent children to middle class folks who don't even have children, just because they paid their taxes.
Civilization is expensive. You don't want old people living in the dumpster behind the country club? You're going to have to fund safety nets, not because it's going to pay off, but because it needs to be done.
There are more, but I have limited typing time and those are the big ones. They alone would solve the problem. Eliminating the department of energy? That wouldn't do a thing, though it would have made a nice finsih to a point in that debate last week.
The problem with government spending is not finding places to cut back. It's finding the political will to cut back in the places where it will make a real difference. We don't have it. So instead of closing that base in your district or asking people who don't need a net to help build it anyway, we posture about cutting things that you could eliminate entirely and not solve anything. And that's a completely non-partisan "we," by the way.
Tim
Tim,
You and I are largely in agreement (Yes I just typed that!).
I agree that we should significantly scale back our presence in Europe. It costs us way too much money and the threat has diminished with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even worse, we have allowed the EU to use resources that should be spent on their own defense to feather an unsustainable welfare state with consequences that are becoming readily apparent. I would say that the world is a dangerous place and sometimes you have to hold your nose and make the best of a bad situation. There are a lot of bad actors out there; many of whom are overtly hostile to Western civilization. Many possess or would like to possess nuclear and biologic weapons.
Part of the problem with reforming entitlements is the difficulty you alluded to: we can't continue to pretend that everyone can be a net importer of entitlement dollars. I don't think anyone has the political will to transition these programs to purely need based programs that are required to make them financially solvent. I do think there is an opportunity to bend the healthcare cost curve downward, but again, this requires a complete re-imagining of how to deliver healthcare by re-establishing the direct relationship between consumer and supplier.
To govern is to choose. I do think that some departments should be eliminated. When the Department of Energy was established in the mid-70's with the goal of making us energy independent we imported 1/3 of our oil; now it's 2/3's. I would consider this a massive failure in its primary mission. Likewise, the Department of Education's budget continues to grow with little improvement in any measurable outcomes. Education is a local issue.
Our window of opportunity to right our financial ship is rapidly closing...Instead of looking at Europe and changing course, we seem to rush headlong emulating their mistakes. Meanwhile, the centrifuges in Iran are spinning....
You and I are largely in agreement (Yes I just typed that!).
I agree that we should significantly scale back our presence in Europe. It costs us way too much money and the threat has diminished with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even worse, we have allowed the EU to use resources that should be spent on their own defense to feather an unsustainable welfare state with consequences that are becoming readily apparent. I would say that the world is a dangerous place and sometimes you have to hold your nose and make the best of a bad situation. There are a lot of bad actors out there; many of whom are overtly hostile to Western civilization. Many possess or would like to possess nuclear and biologic weapons.
Part of the problem with reforming entitlements is the difficulty you alluded to: we can't continue to pretend that everyone can be a net importer of entitlement dollars. I don't think anyone has the political will to transition these programs to purely need based programs that are required to make them financially solvent. I do think there is an opportunity to bend the healthcare cost curve downward, but again, this requires a complete re-imagining of how to deliver healthcare by re-establishing the direct relationship between consumer and supplier.
To govern is to choose. I do think that some departments should be eliminated. When the Department of Energy was established in the mid-70's with the goal of making us energy independent we imported 1/3 of our oil; now it's 2/3's. I would consider this a massive failure in its primary mission. Likewise, the Department of Education's budget continues to grow with little improvement in any measurable outcomes. Education is a local issue.
Our window of opportunity to right our financial ship is rapidly closing...Instead of looking at Europe and changing course, we seem to rush headlong emulating their mistakes. Meanwhile, the centrifuges in Iran are spinning....
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